Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Victoria Police

Jackson TAYLOR (Bayswater) (16:24): I grieve at the opposition’s track record when it comes to supporting Victoria Police, I grieve at their rhetoric they have used in the past around the work of our police officers and their hypocrisy on these matters and I grieve because of their record of cuts when they were in government in these critical areas and many more. From the outset, from the very top of my contribution, I want to acknowledge our frontline men and women, our police officers out there who each and every single day are doing the hard yards keeping Victorians safe 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. They are incredible. They are the best of us. I am proud of them. The Allan Labor government is proud of them. I hope all members in this place are proud of their work but importantly, each and every single day, are not choosing when they back them in based on whatever rhetoric or message they are trying to get out on any given day. I know the government that I have been a part of – the Andrews and now Allan Labor government – have had their back each and every single day, and I am going to take the house through a few points that I want to make.

From my time as a police officer I remember all too well the very difficult job police officers have. I remember the many incidents I went to where there were firearms, there were knives, there were critical incidents, with fantastic support teams that supported me on the front line in my time. I know just how hard their job is and why it is so important to have a government that has their back. Here is the reality: our record of $4.5 billion in investment in Victoria Police has delivered more than 3600 ‍new police officers, the single biggest investment into Victoria Police in its very long and proud history. The recent report on government services shows we have more police on the beat than any other state or territory. Those are the facts when you ask what we have done to support Victoria Police and to support community safety – those are the hard facts.

On the other side, the Liberals cut $100 million in funding to Victoria Police and did not fund a single new police officer when they were in office – not a single police officer. It is a hard job; yes, they deserve our respect, but they also deserve our support and investment. We have increased their numbers some 3600 – and as part of that, new prosecutors. I was very proud just before my time in Parliament began to have started my career as a police prosecutor at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. It was great – every day was leg day: ‘Yes, your honour. No, your honour. Yes, your honour.’ It was fantastic. We have made sure Victoria Police got the support they needed with more prosecutors.

We have got the biggest police force in the nation. We created the new non-emergency police assistance line, an absolute game changer for people in the watch house at police stations right across Victoria, taking that pressure and load off them to make sure they can do the important work that is required of them at the watch house and on the front line. We bolstered Triple Zero Victoria. We provided new tech and new vehicles. We have provided record support for police and protective services officers, and we have also provided dedicated custody officers to take that level of capacity and put serving police officers back into the front line. And having dedicated custody officers has also made a huge difference at police stations right around this state. We have also given them the powers and tools they need – firearms prohibition orders, new training facilities, legislative changes as needed. Whatever Victoria Police have asked for in terms of tools and resources, this government has responded.

We have also got a bill that will strengthen bail laws, and without getting into too much debate we know that what we have is the strengthening of the bail test; clearer powers for courts to revoke bail; the creation of a new standalone offence; obviously the fantastic initiative of the council on bail, rehabilitation and accountability; more prosecutors; and a dedicated magistrate. I hope all members in this house can get behind legislation that will strengthen those bail laws. When it comes to crime prevention we have backed it in with an investment of over $55 million since 2019 and a total of over $100 million since 2015.

We have also got the comprehensive Youth Justice Bill 2024, which seeks to reduce offending and provide genuine opportunities for young people to turn their lives around. When we talk about the work of police, sadly, as we all know too well, family violence is a scourge in this state, in this nation, and it is significant in the make-up of the work of our frontline officers. It is a big part of their work. We have invested in 415 specialist family violence officers and detectives and have established the first ever family violence command and family violence centre for learning at the police academy to ensure they are able to drive this change in offending.

A big part of the reason why I became a police officer was because of my childhood, the family violence that I was a victim of and witness to. That is what drove me to get into the police force and to get into politics – to be a voice for people like me and my two brothers, to be a voice for others and ultimately to be a voice in this place for family violence and to stand up for my community on what matters to them. And what matters to them is supporting our police every single day. I remember in my time on the front line going to the family violence incidents were some of the most difficult, traumatic incidents for me, let alone for the victims that I was there responding to and assisting. I remember one that had a perpetrator who offended over and over and over again and the harrowing experience and what they went through. There is so much trauma and there is so much work that we have done, but there is still so much work to do.

I know that I am proud to be a part of this government because we held the Royal Commission into Family Violence, and we implemented or are implementing all 227 recommendations. We strengthened laws and gave the police the powers they need, as well as body-worn cameras to make it easier for victims to tell their side of the story and to get the help they so desperately need. This was not just nation leading, this royal commission, this was world leading. We talk about our track record, our record investment and the billion dollars of investment we have put into keeping victims of family violence safe and supporting women and children to flee from partners. Like I said, there is so much more work to do, but we have done a great deal. But what did we get from those opposite? What we got from those opposite was they said they would not commit to adopting all 227 recommendations after the amount of work and the importance of this work. What did they say? After we heard from witness after witness, from expert after expert, they said we need to consult more with experts first. Well, how insulting. We have gotten on with the important work.

Let us remember the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System, because these are important areas of police work. They have significant impacts on police work – family violence and mental health. There is a significant amount of police time spent on these types of incidents. I remember sitting in my lounge room watching the then Premier make the announcement that he would call a royal commission if the government was returned and that he would implement every single recommendation. That was bold and that was brave, but it is what was needed. This government stood up and we made the big, bold decision that needed to be taken to essentially take our mental health system and rebuild it from the ground up. Again, our police officers do incredible work. Ambulance Victoria, all the responders and all the people out there do incredible work. It is an incredibly difficult job. I believe we have to rise above politics when it comes to mental health.

But again, what did we get from the Liberals when we had the mental health royal commission? They did backflip after backflip after backflip. And on one of the most important things, the actual funding mechanism that the experts talked about – so we do not need to wait for the experts – and the importance of guaranteeing funding so as to not need to worry about a future government’s decision, what did they say? ‘No, we’re not going to support it.’ Then they did. Then they did not. Then they did. We did not know where they actually stood on this. People knew where we stood on this. We stood to rebuild our mental health system from the ground up, to rewrite the mental health act, to provide more beds for mental health services around this state and to provide more funding than the federal government at the time alone in the state of Victoria. That is action that supports people who are out there right now. One in two people will have a mental health illness during their lifetime. That also supports our frontline responders, like Victoria Police and Ambulance Victoria. That is this government’s record.

And we remember during the pandemic our police did a really tough and difficult job. They rose to the challenge. It was so hard – I remember talking to former colleagues of mine. It was incredibly difficult, and I am so proud of the work that our frontline police and emergency services did. I remember an ABC article:

Three Victorian Liberal MPs have addressed a group of vaccine conspiracy theorists and anti-lockdown protesters at an online rally …

That is what the Liberal Party did, and that was a group who were also anti-maskers, as the article suggests. It also suggests that:

Even if elected officials did not explicitly endorse conspiracies, Dr Roose said having them interact with such groups “acts to legitimise their messaging”.

As the police were dealing with all of the impacts from protests and from people flouting chief health officer recommendations, what did the Liberal Party do? Undercut and undermine the health messaging. Where did that take us? There was another article from the Age, ‘Liberal MPs join protest at which fringe element promotes violence’:

Several state Liberal MPs have encouraged a large and sometimes angry group of protesters gathered on the steps of Parliament House, some of whom had earlier chanted violent slogans around a full-sized gallows …

I will not even say what the chants were. I will not say them. I am sure they would be able to be admitted into Hansard, but I do not want to say them. They were horrible, they were abhorrent. And yet we had Liberal MPs out there, one of whom referred to these protesters as ‘a couple of thousand of my closest friends.’ Others were thanking them. Chants of serious threats were made towards the former Premier, and again I am not going to repeat them. I will not repeat them. The article continues:

But one Liberal MP, who spoke anonymously to reflect frankly on their colleagues, said opposition MPs had the potential to harm the perception of the Coalition among mainstream voters by associating with fringe groups.

Channelling Tim Walz, you just get the sense that maybe this person was trying to say, ‘These guys are just weird. They’re just weird.’ But I am not quite sure that that covers it off. During the pandemic they only sought to divide our community and often tarred our police with a broad brush as armchair critics. But not this government: we have the back of our frontline responders at Victoria Police. We will not seek to divide; we will seek to unify and we will always support the men and women in blue. My opinion does not change with the politics of the day. It does not change based on where I sit or based on politics, and when you talk about supporting police you do not let that change based on the side of the house you are sitting on.

Labor are also of course making investments before people get into the criminal justice system in areas like health, education and more – free kinder, free TAFE, record funding to our schools, capital works, mental health practitioners at every government secondary school, school brekkie clubs, disability inclusion funding, nurse-to-patient ratios, the Home Stretch program. Their record? One billion dollars ripped from education when they were in government, they cut free fruit Fridays, they would not when asked commit to expanding three- and four-year-old kinder. They gutted the TAFE system, they put a padlock on the Lilydale campus, they left schools in disrepair, they went to war with healthcare workers and they had a plan to substitute nurses with unqualified cheaper nursing assistants to save $104 million a year. Shame, shame, shame, shame. For all their bluster about community safety and being tough on crime, the Libs may as well be using ChatGPT to write their policies, because all they have ever done is cut and divide.

Let us not forget what former Liberal elder Tony Nutt said about their 2018 campaign:

The focus on ‘African gangs’ became a distraction for some key voters who saw it as a political tactic rather than an authentic problem to be solved by initiatives that would help make their neighbourhoods safer.

That is their legacy. On that, when you ask ChatGPT, ‘What’s the difference between the Victorian Liberal Party and a broken alarm system?’, it says, ‘The joke plays on the idea of dysfunction.’ Then it says the punchline, ‘One doesn’t work and the other is a broken alarm system.’ Victorian people have figured the Liberal Party out. They have figured them out for their cuts to police, their cuts to frontline emergency services when they were in government and their cuts to health and education, and it appears AI has figured them out as well. The AI is onto something here. The opposition are all about rhetoric in politics. Labor are about supporting frontline police officers every single day.